The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair and Falconer | Page 6

the age of twenty-two, of a consumption. Beattie felt the blow deeply, and published, soon after, the life and remains of the precocious youth. Our readers must all remember the exquisite story of his teaching him the idea of a Creator by sowing his name in cresses in the garden. The loss of Montague, also a youth of much promise, by a rapid fever in 1796, completed the prostration of the poor father. It was the case of Burke over again, but worse, inasmuch as Beattie, a weaker nature, was sometimes driven to seek oblivion in the cup, and as sometimes his reason reeled on its throne, and he went about the house asking where his son was, and whether he had or had not a son. He retired from all society--lost taste for his former pleasures, such as music, which he had once relished so keenly--was seized, in 1799, with a paralytic affection, which deprived him of speech--and languished on, ever and anon visited with new assaults of the same malady, till at last, on the 18th of August 1803, the gifted, amiable, but most miserable "Minstrel" breathed his last. He now lies beside his two dear sons in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Aberdeen, a graceful Latin inscription from the pen of Dr James Gregory of Edinburgh distinguishing the stone which covers his ashes.
Beattie was of the middle size, of slouching gait, and common-place appearance, redeemed by two fine dark eyes, which, melancholy in repose, gleamed and glowed whenever he became animated in conversation. He had warm affections, a tender, shrinking, sensitive disposition, was a kind parent, an attached friend, truly pious, and could be charged with no fault, save an irritability of temper, which grew upon him with his misfortunes and infirmities, and, latterly, that occasional excess to which we have alluded, which sprung rather from dotage and wretchedness than from inclination, and in which he was far more to be pitied than blamed.
Of his pretensions as a philosopher we shall say nothing, save that he has now no name, and is held rather to have struck at and all about Hume, than to have smote him hip and thigh. His essays are exceedingly agreeable reading. Cowper relished no book so well, but they can scarcely be called either profound or brilliant. They soothe, but do not suggest--they tickle, but do not tell us anything new. It is as a poet that his name must survive, and the paean of reception which saluted him in his "Essay on Truth," entering on stilts, should have been reserved entirely for the "Minstrel," with the meek harp in his hand.
Much has been said of the effect of fine scenery upon the development of genius. And as this is the theme of one-half of the "Minstrel," we must be permitted a few remarks on it. The finest scenery in the world cannot, then, 'create' genius. A dunce, born in the Vale of Tempe, will remain a dunce still. And, on the other hand, a poet reared in St Giles or the Goosedubs will develop his poetic vein. The true influences, we suspect, of scenery on genius are the following:--1st, Where poetry lies deep and latent in a deep but silent nature, scenery will act like the rod of Moses on the rock in bringing forth the struggling waters--it will prompt to imitation, and gradually supply language. 2d, Early familiarity with the beautiful aspects of nature will enable the youth of genius to realize the descriptions of nature in the great poetic masters, to test their truth, and imbibe their spirit, by comparing them day by day with their archetypes. He can stand on a snow-clad mountain, with Thomson's "Winter" in his hands. He can walk through a wood of pines, swinging in the tempest, and repeat Coleridge's "Ode to Schiller." He can, lying on a twilight hill, with twilight mountains darkening into night around him, and twilight fields and rivers glimmering far below, and one cataract, touching the grand piano of the silence into melancholy music, turn round and see in the north-east the moon rising in that "clouded majesty" of which Milton had spoken long before. He can take the "Lady of the Lake" to the same summit, while afternoon, the everlasting autumn of the day, is shedding its thoughtful and mellow lines over the landscape, and can see in it a counterpart of the scene at the Trosachs--the woodlands, the mountains, the isle, the westland heaven--all, except the chase, the stag, and the stranger, and these the imagination can supply; or he can plunge into the moorlands, and reaching, toward the close of a summer's day, some insulated peak, can see a storm of wild mountains between him and the west, dark and proud, like captives at the chariot-wheels